Musings on Buddhism and modern global culture, plus a few miscellaneous topics.

Tuesday, 8 April 2014

Were Omar Mateen and the Boston Bombers mentally ill?

Were the Boston Bombers contagiously insane?

UPDATEOn 12-Jun-2016, Omar Mir Seddique Mateen, a devout Muslim who had been offended by the sight of men kissing, carried out the most vicious Islamic attack since 9/11, when he got into The Pulse gay club in Orlando and massacred 50 customers.As Omar Mateen spent his formative years in the West, it again raises the question originally asked after the Boston attacks, whether exposure to the metameme during their education could have prevented him and other Muslims going into jihad mode.

The metamemeOne interesting question is whether the meme theory is itself a meme
('The Metameme') and whether its spread could block and give immunity to
more pernicious memes, much like the harmless cowpox virus can block
out the lethal smallpox virus. Once you know how memes work, you may be less susceptible to becoming infected.

...Based on the content of the videos, which feature Bin Laden, calls to
kill Americans, Jews, Christians and exhortations to establish a
world-wide caliphate, it is clear that these message are not directed
just at Chechens. "They are directed primarily against all non-Muslims
and are very similar to the Al Qaeda videos we've seen in years past." The two brothers clearly want "to express a message that they totally
sympathize with the jihadist cause. These were jihadists, they were not
just Chechen separatists."

"...strike off their heads..." Quran 8:12

The Quran is the meme that provides the justification for these beheadings and bomb attacks Quran (8:12) - "I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Therefore strike off their heads and strike off every fingertip of them" Okay, bombs may not be such a precise means of mutilation as a meat cleaver; they tend to remove limbs and other body parts rather randomly, especially when packed with nails. But the general idea is there, and the Boston bombers followed the spirit, if not the precise letter of the Quran, like the London beheaders.

Robert Spencer has further details on meme propagation outside jails:"I referred during this interview to four separate studies that all
found that 80% of U.S. mosques were teaching jihad, Islamic supremacism,
and hatred and contempt for Jews and Christians. There are no
countervailing studies that challenge these results... ... And in the summer of 2011 came another study showing that only 19% of mosques in U.S. don’t teach jihad violence and/or Islamic supremacism."

Could knowledge of memetics prevent terrorism?

Richard Dawkins - meme theorist

''We have the power to defy the selfish genes of our birth and, if
necessary, the selfish memes of our indoctrination. We can even
discuss ways of deliberately cultivating and nurturing pure,
disinterested altruism - something that has no place in nature,
something that has never existed before in the whole history of the
world. We are built as gene machines and cultured as meme machines, but
we have the power to turn against our creators. We, alone on earth, can
rebel against the tyranny of the selfish replicators." - Richard Dawkins

We'll never be able stop 'violent radicalization' until Mohammedans agree to remove the numerous incitements to violence from the Quran. But they can't do that because the entire Quran is the literal Word of God, valid for all time. Mohammedans know that it's the word of God because it says so, and what God says must be true.

The only way out of this pernicious circular logic is to realise that the Quran is a self-perpetuating scam. An understanding of the psychological dynamics of memes could hopefully produce an 'Emperor's new clothes moment' among the afflicted. This requires a type of mindfulness meditation on the arising and interconnectness of the delusions that comprise the jihadist memeplex, in order to break their self-reinforcing vicious circle.

As dangerous in a man as rabies in a dog.From the Buddhist point of view, jihadists such as the beheaders and bombers deserve compassion just as much as their victims, for their lives are also being ruined by this contagious mental illness of self-reinforcing delusions. A rabid dog suffers from the hydrophobia virus just as much as the people he bites.

Jihadists deserve compassion like their victims

And perhaps Buddhism might offer some hope of treatment for jihadists. It may be possible to use Buddhist meditation techniques to cut through delusions and weed out malignant memes even after they have become established... More here